In my peripatetic life, I have found that, no matter how many times I move, it never gets any easier.  In fact, the annoyances that come with sorting the relevant with the irrelevant don’t seem to decrease in size. They actually metamorphosize into Kafkaesque gigantic insects, which cannot be swatted down.

However, the hardest part of having to get up and go, is the realization that I am leaving behind a portion of my heart.  Partir c’est mourir un peu. To leave is to die a little. It hurts.  There is a hole, and nothing will ever fill the void.  Yes, there will be new experiences, and new friends, which will allow the hole to shrink, but a hole it will always remain.

One of the nicest memories I took away from every Foreign Service post was sharing times with most Embassy members, trying, in a small way, to serve the U.S. Government while I was there.

I was not the “employee”, but rather what was then labeled the “dependent spouse”, a moniker that I never liked because it made the spouse an appendage of sorts! And it did not reflect reality either. Also, there were lots of partners accompanying the Foreign Service Officers. But that is a subject for a future musing.

An era always ends, when so many good Embassy people leave, and a new era begins, with so many new people coming to post. 

I always imagined, based on myriad of conversations, it had to be hard for all the local employees who remained to adjust to yet another change, no matter what.  Although, in a few occasions, they were delighted that the tour was relatively short, to see insufferable characters move on! At the end of the day, though, we, the expats, come and go… but the Foreign Service Nationals are always there, a wonderful steadfast presence.

If I have two big regrets that have been common whenever I left every country I lived in it is that I failed to avail myself of all the incredible opportunities that the Embassy network and expat and local communities provided the transient dependent, and that, because of my own busy life, I did not dedicate as much time to get to know many of the Embassy member employees better. Sometimes, our paths did cross again, here or there, but not as often as I had hoped.

Those are the regrets that come with the realization that life is a river, never stopping, ever flowing, until the end.

I learnt about this poem and the song from my Mother, when we lived in Tokyo, She was a young mother then, and now I realize how she ached for what she had left behind. But at the time, she never showed her melancholy. On the contrary, we were embarking on a new and exciting adventure.

I leave you with the great Pavarotti and a translation of the French poet Edmond Haraucourt’s best known poems.

Rondel de l'adieu
by Edmond Haraucourt 
 
To part, is to die a little,
Dying to the things we love:
We leave a little of ourselves
In each hour and each place.

Always the grieving of a wish
The closing verse of a poem;
To part, is to die a little,
Dying to the things we love.

And in parting, just a game,
Yet until the final goodbye
With our souls, we leave
Our marks at each farewell:
To part, is to die a little.